Layers of Reality
by Art-Over-Matter
Summary: Sebastian thought his time in STEM was over. He thought he could put the death of his friend behind him. But everything keeps coming back to him and he begins to wonder which layer of his mind's reality is actually the truth... Rated T for language and some gore.


**A/N: I should briefly mention that I don't actually support many of the story theories this fanfiction conveys, so if there's anything you find that doesn't make sense in the context of the game, I probably already know about it. And I don't think this is how things will go.**

 **But enjoy an AU fic!**

Ruvik stood at the end of the bloodstained hall, facing Sebastian. His tattered cloak hung off of him like wet, torn paper tossed over a tree branch.

Sebastian raised his revolver, keeping it even with Ruvik's head. When a moment went by without anything happening, Sebastian fired.

Just as he pulled the trigger, Ruvik's form wavered and disappeared, appearing several yards closer as the bullet rang off the wall behind him.

"What do you want, Ruvik?" Sebastian demanded, keeping his gun up even though he knew it would do him no good.

"I just need you to cooperate with me," Ruvik said, his deep, gravelly voice ringing across the hallway despite the fact that he never spoke loudly.

His form disappeared again and he reappeared directly in front of Sebastian, less than two feet away. Before Sebastian could back up, Ruvik grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his head back.

In his distraction, Sebastian hadn't realized Ruvik had locked a hand around Sebastian's right wrist, where he was still trying to hold on to his gun. With a slight, violent gesture, Ruvik twisted Sebastian's arm down to his side, snapping his wrist in the process. A burning jolt of pain ran up Sebastian's arm all the way to his shoulder, leaving his wrist in fiery agony. He involuntarily tried to shout in pain, but all that came out was a strained grunt. He couldn't see much of Ruvik with his head pulled back, but when he felt the cold, thin pressure on his neck, he knew it was the blade of a knife.

"You've been fighting against me, but you can't possibly resist for long," Ruvik purred.

"Fuck off," Sebastian said, somewhere between a gasp and a snarl.

Ruvik sneered, "Oh, but you tempt me just to-"

And then Sebastian's throat exploded in pain and everything went black.

Sebastian jerked awake to the sound of splashing and a dull throb in the back of his neck. He reached a hand around and found a thick cord dug into his skin just at the base of his scalp. Of course. He'd been plugged in to the STEM system.

He yanked the cord out with a shock of ice-cold pain that spread through his head. The throb disappeared, but he was left with a stabbing headache.

He climbed out of the tub of milky liquid, feeling disoriented. There were other tubs surrounding the machine, but the three he could see didn't hold anyone.

A door into the circular room burst open and Kidman and Joseph entered, both holding pistols and scanning the room before approaching Sebastian.

"What's wrong?" Sebastian demanded.

"We have to go. Now," Kidman said.

Joseph tossed Sebastian a revolver, which he caught and checked for ammo. It was full.

"You okay?" Joseph asked.

"Yeah," Sebastian said slowly. "What are we doing?"

"I told you," Kidman answered, crossing the room and opening another door for them to go through, "we're getting out."

"Why?" Sebastian growled.

His question was answered when the door Joseph and Kidman had entered through was slammed into the room, along with much of the wall. The creature-monstrosity-that was revealed was something straight out of hell. It was a mass of human arms and faces, all melted onto the thing's torso; instead of arms, six huge tentacles reached out from its side and two legs held its weight below. The head was a mound of skinless flesh, its mouth oozing green pus.

Sebastian backed up toward Kidman while leveling his gun at the creature's head. He fired twice and at least one shot hit, but the thing barely flinched.

"Sebastian, come on!" Kidman yelled from the hallway beyond the door.

Sebastian turned and ran. He fell in behind the other two as he heard the monster burst through the wall behind them. It wasn't gaining on them and they might have been able to lose it-

Something snagged Sebastian's leg and his momentum pulled him to the ground. His revolver went off, the bullet hitting the ground or the wall somewhere-he'd really been running with it in hand?-as his breath was slammed out of him.

"Sebastian!" he heard Joseph call.

Coughing and gasping for breath, Sebastian looked down to the barbed wire wrapped around his leg, tearing into his pant leg, into his skin. He started to try to tug it off when he saw the monster charging at him from the other end of the hall.

"Sebastian!" Joseph called again, closer this time.

"Joseph, no!" Kidman shouted at him.

Sebastian looked up, where Joseph was running down the hall toward him, gun raised at the creature. Sebastian shook his head and started to choke out, "No, just keep-" but he realized he was only wasting his own precious time.

Joseph fired three times at the monster pursuing them, just enough to slow it down.

Sebastian tore the wire off his leg and stumbled to his feet. As he turned to glance at the monster, a tentacle reached out to snatch him before a gunshot went off and it whipped back to the creature.

Sebastian turned and shoved Joseph in the shoulder to get him to start running, swooping down and grabbing his gun to fire a few shots at the monster while Joseph began to run.

Sebastian followed, and it was only after a few more seconds of sprinting that he heard Kidman yelling, "Right, right! To your right!"

Joseph caught sight of it first, and before Sebastian could fully process what had happened, Joseph had dived into an open vent in the wall. Sebastian saw Kidman standing there, waiting for him to go in before following herself.

He slowed just enough to throw himself to the side and into the vent.

The vent sloped downward, preserving Sebastian's momentum until he was thrown out at the bottom. He landed with a sickening squelch in a pile of rotting organs, nearly flipping head over heels.

He got his wits about him just fast enough to roll aside as Kidman slid out of the chute as well.

Sebastian groaned and pulled himself to hands and knees, feeling nauseous and lightheaded. His lungs immediately sent him into a fit of coughing, all those past cigarettes catching up with him in the form of a nagging, painful tightness in his chest that prevented him from recovering the breath he needed after sprinting.

When the coughing had stopped-Sebastian's chest still heaving with lack of air-Joseph spoke.

"You tried to stop me back there," Joseph accused Kidman.

"I thought it was too late," she started to explain. "I-"

"She should have," Sebastian said, standing to face Joseph. "Fuck you for risking that."

"Fuck you for not appreciating the fact that I saved your life, Sebastian," Joseph retorted, surprised and indignant. "What the hell, both of you?"

"If we hang back and try to help one another every time something like that happens, none of us are going to make it out of this alive."

Joseph's incredulous expression sank into a frown. "You mean, Sebastian, that you would have left one of _us_ to die?" he challenged.

"I-" Sebastian cut himself off and turned away, shaking his head. Of course he wouldn't have. Why was he expecting anything different out of Joseph?

A door creaked open somewhere behind him and Sebastian turned back to see.

Across the gore-ridden room, a rusted door opened and the pale, fumbling form of Leslie Withers stepped inside, muttering something unintelligible.

"Leslie!" Kidman said, starting to step over to him.

A wave ran through Sebastian's vision, rippling everything in front of him. He felt a sharp pain inside his skull, enough to make him double over and hold his head. He felt rather than saw the wave come again, rumbling the floor beneath him. There was only one thing this meant: they were still inside STEM-something he should have known upon seeing the mutated monster-and Ruvik was there, all around them, in their heads almost as they were in his.

Sebastian looked up, still pressing his hands against either side of his head, to see Kidman aiming a gun at Leslie.

He fought the pain enough to pull out his gun and point it at Kidman. "What are you doing?"

She looked over at him and stiffened. "I have to do this, Sebastian. Ruvik wants Leslie. He needs Leslie."

"Needs...needs...needs..." Leslie muttered over and over.

"Then we'll keep him away from him," Sebastian said. He glanced to the side, where he saw Joseph starting to approach Leslie.

The pain in his head faded with the waves in his vision and Sebastian saw Leslie turn and start to shuffle away from the conflict. As Joseph stepped up to him, gun in hand, Kidman pulled the trigger and the shot exploded into Joseph's chest.

Sebastian Castellanos awoke in a cold sweat. He took a moment to get his bearings. He was sitting up in a small, dark room whose only source of light was the vague city glow from outside the window.

The sheets of his bed were partially thrown off to the side, which told him he'd been affected by the nightmare beyond just his mind.

Nightmare.

Sebastian internally scoffed and stood. Who knew if it even was a fucking nightmare? Reality, nightmares, STEM, it all wove together in his mind to point that he could never be sure of anything.

Right now, he was settled with the idea that this was reality, and nothing had proven him wrong yet.

He snatched a pack of cigarettes and a lighter off the dresser and lit one in the darkness. He wished he'd get out of this habit, but fuck. At least it was the one thing that had stayed the same for the past months.

Here he was, having the same types of nightmares over and over again, waking up in an icy panic after seeing his friend get shot in the chest. It hadn't been terribly long since he'd woken up at Beacon Mental Hospital, recently unplugged from STEM, and stumbled out into the city, still severely disoriented from being hooked to so many other minds. But he wouldn't have expected it to affect him this much.

Sebastian stepped out onto the metal balcony outside his room. He pulled his cigarette out from between his lips with two fingers and rested his forearms on the railing, his head hung.

What was there to do now? Everything he'd ever known was gone and his entire perception of reality had been torn apart.

He could keep living, aimlessly. He could go back to KCPD. No doubt they'd need him, though whether or not they'd accept him was a different matter.

Or he could wait. Wait for something to happen, something that would tell him whether or not anything was real.

Because as much as he tried to shake the feeling-as much as he'd grown accustomed to repressed memories and emotions-he couldn't kill the idea that he was still inside STEM.

That he'd never actually woken up.


End file.
